IRB is dying on me

[Peter Bailey]

Why is it that I can't repeat lines and edit them in IRB? If I press my
cursor up key, normally, that repeats the line I just entered. Then, I
can backspace and modify any part of that line I want before executing
it. But, it's dying on me. After I backspace a few characters, the
cursor goes nuts, and, I've lost my instruction string. Has anyone else
seen this behavior?

Thanks,
Peter

 

[Greg Donald]

Why is it that I can't repeat lines and edit them in IRB? If I press my
cursor up key, normally, that repeats the line I just entered. Then, I
can backspace and modify any part of that line I want before executing
it. But, it's dying on me. After I backspace a few characters, the
cursor goes nuts, and, I've lost my instruction string. Has anyone else
seen this behavior?

Sounds like your missing readline support.

 

[Peter Bailey]

Sounds like your missing readline support.

Sorry, but, I don't know what that is. Is that a gem I need to install?

 

[Greg Donald]

Sorry, but, I don't know what that is. Is that a gem I need to install?

Readline is the library that makes your irb behave more like a modern
shell. I added readline support to my Ruby when I compiled it.

--with-readline-dir=/usr/local

 

[Peter Bailey]

Readline is the library that makes your irb behave more like a modern
shell. I added readline support to my Ruby when I compiled it.

--with-readline-dir=/usr/local

OK. Well, I'm on Windows and I didn't compile anything. Ruby's been
"out-of-the-box" for me for almost a year now and it's worked
beautifully. I'll look into it further. Thanks.

 

[Peter Bailey]

OK. Well, I'm on Windows and I didn't compile anything. Ruby's been
"out-of-the-box" for me for almost a year now and it's worked
beautifully. I'll look into it further. Thanks.

Well, I tried everything including uninstalling and re-installing Ruby.
But, it still isn't working. This is very weird.

 

[John Joyce]

Well, I tried everything including uninstalling and re-installing
Ruby.
But, it still isn't working. This is very weird.

Ask yourself if you've installed anything recently (since you last
remember it working) ...
Something could've clobbered something.
Is your keyboard working in every app?
Is it CygWin or something?